Table Of ContentSEVEN DAYS
THAT DIVIDE THE
W O R L D
THE BEGINNING ACCORDING TO
GENESIS AND SCIENCE
JOHN C. LENNOX
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Seven Days That Divide the World
Copyright © 2011 by John C. Lennox
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lennox. John C. (John Carson)
Seven days that divide the world: the beginning according to
Genesis and science/ John C. Lennox.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index [if applicable].
ISBN 978 -0-310-49217 -7 (hardcover. jacketed)
1. Bible and science. I. Title.
BS651.L3625 2011
231.7'652 - dC22 2011007879
All Scripture quotations. unless otherwise indicated. are taken from The
Holy Bible. English Standard Version. copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles.
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Interior design: Ben Fetter/ey & Matthew VanZomeren
Printed in the United States of America
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For Larry Taunton, whose idea it was
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ............ ...... ... ......1 1
Chapter One
BUT DOES IT MOVE?
A LESSON FROM HISTORY ...... ........... 15
Chapter Two
BUT DOES IT MOVE?
A LESSON ABOUT SCRIPTURE .............. 21
Chapter Three
BUT IS IT OLD?
THE DAYS OF CREATION ... ... ...... ... ... 39
Chapter Four
HUMAN BEINGS: A SPECIAL CREATION? .. ... 67
Chapter Five
THE MESSAGE OF GENESIS 1. .............. 91
APPENDICES
Appendix A
A BRIEF BACKGROUND TO GENESIS ... ..... 119
Appendix B
THE COSMIC TEMPLE VIEW ...... .. ....... 130
Appendix C
THE BEGINNING ACCORDING
TO GENESIS AND SCIENCE .. .... ....... .. 150
Appendix D
TWO ACCOUNTS OF CREATION? ......... 156
Appendix E
THEISTIC EVOLUTION AND
THE GOD OF THE GAPS .. ................ 160
NOTES ............... ... .... .. ...... ... 184
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................. 188
GENERAL INDEX ...... ...... .......... ... 189
INTRODUCTION
BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
These majestic words introduce the most translated, most
printed, and most read book in history. I well remember
how profoundly they affected me on Christmas Eve 1968,
when, as a student at Cambridge University, I heard them
read to the watching world on live television by the crew of
Apollo 8 as they orbited the moon. The context was a trium
phant achievement of science and technology that caught
the imagination of the millions of people who watched it.
To celebrate that success the astronauts chose to read a text
that needed no added explanation or qualification, even
though it was written millennia ago. The biblical announce
ment of the fact of creation was as timelessly clear as it was
magnificently appropriate.
However, as distinct from the fact of creation, when it
comes to the timing and means of creation, particularly the
interpretation of the famous sequence of days with which
the book begins, people over the centuries have found the
book of Genesis less easy to understand. Indeed, controversy
about this matter is at an all-time high, with the debate
about teaching creationism and evolution in schools in the
USA, the question of faith schools in the UK,l and, per
haps most of all, the popular perception of Christianity as
unscientific (or even antiscientific) because of the Genesis
account-a perception that is vocally endorsed by the New
Atheists.
11
SEVEN DAYS THAT DIVIDE THE WORLD
I once met a brilliant professor of literature from a
famous university in a country where it was not easy to dis
cuss the Bible publicly. She was intrigued to learn that I
was a scientist who believed the Bible, and she said that she
would like to ask me a question she had always wanted to
ask but never dared to. She also said, with typically Eastern
sensitivity, that she was reluctant to ask me the question in
case it offended me: "We were taught at school that the Bible
starts with a very silly, unscientific story of how the world
was made in seven days. What do you have to say about it
as a scientist?"
This book is written for people like her, who have been
putting off even considering the Christian faith for this kind
of reason. It is also written for the many convinced Chris
tians who are disturbed not only by the controversy but
also by the fact that even those who take the Bible seriously
do not agree on the interpretation of the creation account.
Some think that the only faithful interpretation of Scripture
is the young-earth, literal view of the Genesis days that was
made famous by Archbishop Ussher (1581-1656) of the
city of Armagh in Northern Ireland-where, incidentally, I
lived for the first eighteen years of my life. Ussher gave 4004
Be as the date for the origin of the earth. His calculation,
based on taking the days of Genesis 1 as twenty-four-hour
days of one earth week at the beginning of the universe,
is six orders of magnitude away from the current scientific
estimate of around four billion years.
Others hold that the text can be understood in concord
with contemporary science. Such old-earth creationists are
again split over the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution
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INTRODUCTION
valid, others not. Finally, yet others argue that the Genesis
account is written to communicate timeless theological truth
and that attempts to harmonise it with science are misguided.
The topic is clearly a potential minefield. Yet I do not
think that the situation is hopeless. For a start, there are
many Christians who, like me, are convinced of the inspira
tion and authority of Scripture and have spent their lives
actively engaged in science. We think that, since God is
the author both of his Word the Bible and of the universe,
there must ultimately be harmony between correct interpre
tation of the biblical data and correct interpretation of the
scientific data. Indeed, it was the conviction that there was
a creative intelligence behind the universe and the laws of
nature that gave the prime stimulus and momentum to the
modern scientific quest to understand nature and its laws
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore,
science-far from making God redundant and irrelevant,
as atheists often affirm - actually confirms his existence,
which is the theme of my book God's Undertaker: Has Sci
ence Buried God?2
ORGANISATION OF THE BOOK
This book has five chapters and five appendices. As an intro
duction to controversy and how we handle it, the first chap
ter discusses the challenge which the scientific theory that
the earth was moving in space posed to generally accepted
biblical interpretation in the sixteenth-century. The second
chapter moves on to some principles of biblical interpreta-
- \ tion and applies them to that controversy. The third is the
heart of the book, where we consider the interpretation of
13
SEVEN DAYS THAT DIVIDE THE WORLD
the Genesis days. The fourth is given over to the biblical
account of the origin of human beings, their antiquity, and
related theological questions about death. Finally, in the
fifth chapter we balance our discussion of the creation week
by drawing on the New Testament in order to learn what
aspects of the Genesis 1 creation narrative are emphasized
there, and why they are relevant for us today.
The appendices deal with several issues that, though
important, are placed at the end of the book so that the
reader can engage with the main biblical material without
many digressions. Appendix A looks at the background of
Genesis, in terms of culture and literature. Appendix B is
devoted to what is called the cosmic temple view of Gen
esis 1. Appendix C describes the convergence of Genesis
and science over the fact that space-time had a beginning.
Appendix D considers the question of whether there is con
flict between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Finally, appendix E
considers theistic evolution, with special attention paid to
the so-called God-of-the-gaps arguments.
I would like to emphasise that this little book does not
pretend to be exhaustive in its scope. It has been written
in response to frequent requests over the years. In order to
keep the book short, I have had to prioritise those issues
about which I have been most often questioned. Many other
interesting questions have had to be omitted.
NOTES
1. These are confessional schools of Jewish, Christian, Muslim,
or any other religious foundation.
2.John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
(Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2009).
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